Wednesday, December 4, 2013

My next performance featuring Antarctic compositions will be this coming Wednesday evening at Meridian Gallery in San Francisco...

WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 20137:30pm, $10 general, $8 students/seniorsMeridian Gallery
535 Powell Street
San Francisco, CAMeridian Music: Composers in PerformanceCheryl Leonard presents music and
multimedia works inspired by environments and ecosystems in the polar
regions. The evening will include the premiere of Ablation Zone, a new composition
about Antarctica's melting glaciers and video/music collaborations with Oona Stern and Genevieve Swifte.

And, if you can't make the Meridian show, next month I'll be performing again in San Francisco...

FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 20148pm, $10-15 suggested donationTurquoise Yantra Grotto
32 Turquoise Way
San Francisco, CAFire and Ice: New Music at Extreme TemperaturesConceptual sound artist Todd Lerew
presents a work of thermoacoustics on his quartz test tube organ. Cheryl
Leonard performs a set of music connected to climate change in the
polar regions including pieces that explore shrinking sea ice, the
collapse of Adélie penguin populations, changing weather patterns, and
melting tidewater glaciers.

My latest Antarctic musical instrument, constructed out of driftwood, dried kelp, and penguin vertebrae, is titled Last Flight of the Adélies. To me, the elegant Adélie vertebrae looked like miniscule spaceships, or, seen from another angle, tiny white birds in flight. Thus I mounted the bones in a flock/formation, with swirly, swooping kelp tracing the flight paths of each individual bird/ship. The name of the instrument is a reference to the collapse of Adélie penguin colonies near Palmer Station, plus I like the idea of flightless (yes, I know they are phenomenal underwater "flyers") penguins returning to the sky.

The instrument will be amplified via a contact mic attached to the wood base and played by bowing, tapping, and rubbing the bones and kelp. It will make it's performance debut next week during my concert at Meridian Gallery in San Francisco.